My Poop in a Box

Okay, so not exactly MY poop. It was the little man's poop. But in an effort to pay homage to Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg, I stayed true to the phrasing.

We thought we were done. He'd finally mastered the art of using the toilet. Wiping, no, but that's a whole other siutation which I won't worry about right now. Nobody takes their mom to college with them because they can't wipe their own bum, right?

About a month ago, the little man went crazy. That is truly the only explanation I can come up with. A week before his fifth birthday, he got up from the living room floor, said "I'll be right back" and went into his room and closed the door. Now, a year ago this would have been cause for alarm as this would SURELY have meant he was in there dropping a trouser bomb, but we were past that. We were confident in his newfound skills and knew we were in a poop-free situation.

Or so we thought.

A few minutes later we heard the little man giggling and jumping up and down. Mr. Awesome went to his room to investigate what was happening, and I have never heard the tone that errupted from him seconds later. It was a mixture of anger, disgust, disbelief, shock...and then an eery calm, followed by silence.

Because what do you say when your almost five year old son takes off his pants, empties a cardboard box, crouches over the box and POOS? And then proceeds to check out the poo and wind up smearing it on the carpet and closet doors?

You say nothing. Because rage and despair have stolen your voice.

This incident was followed by another, where he made "a nest" of toilet paper on the floor in the bathroom and made a deposit, and several other times where he figured the best place to have a pee was in the corner of his bedroom.

Needless to say, all the Lego he'd been rewarded for his toilet achievements was promptly removed. I am happy (and relieved) to note that this phase has now passed and we are back to putting "things" where they should go, but it really shook my understanding of the child psyche. He got his Lego back and we're all good again...for now.

Parenthood. It gets you every time. Just when you think you've mastered one phase and finally moved on to greener pastures, your kid poos in a box.

Hello Kitty, Goodbye Diapers

We decided some time ago that we would not potty train the little miss. Like, ever. We quite simply did not want to fail as epically as we had with the little man. A year and a half of absolute hell had scarred us to the point of letting her wear diapers forever rather than start the nightmare all over again.

Even at fourteen months when she started using the toilet on a semi-regular basis, we resisted. I didn't even write about it here because if I ignored it then it wasn't real. It was too early, we didn't want to push it. She was pooping on the potty long before the little man, but we were too mired in the dark, bribery-riddled place of Legos for poops to actually admit it. The closest we came was moving her from diapers to Pull-Ups, to make her frequent potty trips more convenient.

She wouldn't even use the potty, preferring the actual toilet for her business. And despite our only taking her when she announced it, she was still averaging about a 75% success rate. People would ask if we were training her and we would either avoid the question or flatly say "No." We would just take her when she said she had to go. But potty training? Never.

Last week her preschool teacher asked if we wanted to start, as apparently any time they asked the kids who were potty training if they had to go she would squeal with glee and do anything she could to join them. Our little girl was basically begging for it, wanting desperately to be part of that toilet-using elite.

The time had come and we couldn't ignore it anymore. We agreed that we would start potty training the following Monday, but on Friday morning our little lady announced that she wanted to wear panties. So there you go.

Now the little man actually mastered peeing LONG before the other business got sorted out, so I had kind of forgotten those messy first few days. Four sets of wet pants later and I decided to brave a trip to Walmart. Crazy? You bet. But it was fine. We even bought her a few sets of Hello Kitty underpants to sweeten the pot, but I was confident in the power of the Dora the Explorer pair she was wearing. I mean, how could you pee on Dora?

It was only on a stop at the library on our way home that my cockiness caught up with me. Now, I'm not a complete idiot. I did have a change of her clothes with me. But being out of practice with the wet pants scenario, I did neglect to pack an extra pair of socks. Or a plastic bag to put the wet clothes in. Rookie move. Serious rookie move.

That was last week. And we're pretty much done. A few accidents here and there, but basically done. Thank you God, Hello Kitty or whatever power you choose to pray to. And you can hate me all you want, but I invite you to read ANY of my previous posts to know that this is truly some sort of divine intervention and someone up there is paying us back for the trauma we endured for almost two years.

We're still in diapers for bedtime, whereas the little man stayed dry through the night from early on. It really does go to show you that every kid is different and you just never know. I can't even bear to think how many trouser bombs we could have avoided if we had let the little man do things in his own time. We were first-time parents and eager to get started, and well...you know how that turned out. Maybe not even in his own time, as he could very well be in diapers til this day, but just a little longer.

Hindsight is 20/20. And I can "what if" and "if only" with the best of them, but for now I will just be happy to be done with potty training, once and for all.

Now if we could just find the magic answer for the little man's sleep issues.

It's always something.

Giving Thanks for Poop: Potty Training Progress

It's Thanksgiving in Canada and I am thankful for all the blessings in my life. But most of all, today, I am thankful for poop.

As I type, the little man is in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet.

That's right friends, we have achieved the impossible. The unimaginable. The dream of all potty-training-challenged parents everywhere. The little man is pooping on the potty.

After one year and nine months of pants bombs, trouser grenades, Code Browns and poop-splosions, we are now on day four of toilet poops.

If the past year and nine months has taught me anything, it's to not get my hopes up. I am taking this day by day and not assuming that the accidents are behind us forever, but holy mother of GOD does this feel good.

There have been a couple of steps forward and many steps back in the last month, but it started to finally feel like we were doing something right. We had a visit with the pediatrician a few months ago and explained the hell we were living (not in quite those words), and he "prescribed" a six month course of not talking about poop. Now, for anyone that's been reading this blog for a while now, you know that that's virtually impossible for me. And his advice wasn't to necessarily banish the topic, but to just not make it a big deal. If accidents happened, clean them up and move on. And we were to not spend any length of time discussing the situation, either with the little man, each other or anyone else.

While this did not magically end the messes, it did lift the stress right off. Our home became more relaxed and everyone involved got happier. Now, patience has never been one of my virtues, so it won't be a surprise to anyone that we didn't wait the FULL six months. But we followed the cues the little man gave us, and we started a whole new plan.

We were at Costco one day (imagine that) and found a set of interactive books called Ready to Read. Kind of like LeapFrog, this set comes with a "pen" that reads the coding on the pages and plays words, songs, stories, etc. Some of the books are more advanced, so those went up on the shelf. These became our potty books. They could only be read while sitting on the toilet. Pretty soon he wanted to sit on the toilet all the time, as he loved them so much. He wasn't actually trying to go, but it was a HUGE step forward from where we'd been.

At the same time we instituted a reward chart. Our initial challenge was that for months he had absolutely refused to sit on the toilet. He would lose his mind if we even suggested it, so at first the reward stickers were for sitting. For every five stickers he would get a (small) Lego set.

We very quickly realized we were going to go broke fast with the current system. Mr. Awesome is a bit of a Lego-fiend, so he wasn't terribly upset that we were amassing a large amount of the stuff, but the stickers became for actually trying. And over the past month or so, there have been a few successes. Sort of a "one step forward, two steps back" situation, but still progress where none had been.

Then, four days ago, just before bed, the little man said "I think I have to go poop." In he went, sat himself down, and started his reading. Then something changed. He got a look of concentration on his face that we hadn't seen before. And he did it. Because it was just before bed we all happened to be in the bathroom at the time, and man, did we celebrate. I was on the verge of hysteria, almost in tears, laughing and screaming for joy. Mr. Awesome kept saying things like "Dude, that's awesome!" and "Buddy, that's fantastic! I'm so proud of you!" And the little man loved every minute of it. He was laughing and loving our impromptu "potty party," so very proud of himself.

It was like a switch needed to be flicked and he finally "got it." I equate it with the moment I finally KNEW what I had to do to succeed with Weight Watchers. True and lasting success only comes when one is really ready for it. No one can make that happen for you. And just like a weight loss journey, there may be setbacks.

Like I said earlier, we're on day four. Four days of telling us he had to go, sitting on the toilet and actually going. And I'm good with that.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and thanks be to poop.

We Suck at Potty Training, or Why Pull-Ups Should Sponsor Me

Last January, that's 2010, we figured we'd better think about potty training the little man. We were planning a trip to Hawaii in April and we thought "Wouldn't it be fantastic if he was trained by the time we went?"

FOOLS. We were absolute fools. On February 22, 2010, I wrote my first blog post ever. I then got very eager and immediately wrote two more, including my first post about potty training. The first of many on the subject.

I called today's post "We Suck at Potty Training," but the truth is if ANY of our methods or tactics had worked we would be touting ourselves as experts in the field and sharing our knowledge with the world. Instead, I am sharing our utter and complete failure.

He'd been in "real underwear" from the beginning of the training, as everyone said never to go back once you'd started. Well, "everyone" hasn't been dealing with trouser bombs every single day for a year. He'd been doing okay, seemingly making good progress on the pee and letting us know when he had to go. The pants grenades were another issue, but we seemed okay with pee. Sure, there were a few accidents here and there but he was even managing to stay dry through the night, most nights.

We've tried bribery. We've tried empowering him. We've tried taking things away. We've been soft and supportive. We've ignored it completely. We've tried letting him go pantsless but quite frankly that grosses me out as he has a tendency towards "sharts" when he's trying his best to hold in his business. Lovely.

It's been over a year. Over the last few months he's gotten worse and worse at letting us know he has to pee, and the accidents have been getting more and more frequent. He will NOT speak at preschool, so occasionally the accidents happened there. In one span of three days he peed his pants eight times, plus of course the daily weapons of mass destruction.

That was it. We were done. We are back in Pull-Ups after a YEAR of potty training. We are not typically prone to throwing in the towel on anything, but we are mentally and emotionally spent. This kid can stay in Pull-Ups until he's thirty if he has to. Do you think Pull-Ups might condsider sponsoring me?!

He turns four in a few weeks and we've been saying that when he turns four he'll be a "big boy" and have to use the potty all by himself. Maybe the stress of that date looming as been the cause of the accidents and his refusal to alert us to his urges. But honestly, I do not know what else to try. We could go back to ignoring it, or I could put sheets over everything, including the carpet and hardwood, and take off the pants again. Shudder.

Part of the problem, I THINK, is that he's just so freaking adaptable. He'll pretty much go along with any situation presented to him. It's like his reality shifts and he moves on - "Oh. I have a poop in my pants the size of an avocado. This is my new reality. Okay. Now where are my trains?"

I just don't know. This seems longer than ANY other potty training saga I have ever heard, but I have noticed that the only people that tend to talk about it are the ones that magically trained their kid in a week or two. I have a note for these people: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. If I am telling you that I have been dealing with puddles and poop for over a year, DO NOT tell me how exceptional your child is at managing his own bodily functions. I don't want to hear it. That was a story for a year ago. Not for a parent that is at her wit's end, envisioning her son going off to college with his Costco-sized box of training pants.

So there you have it. The long-winded update on the continuing saga of potty training in the House of Awesome. Or in this case, Not-So-Awesome.

Seriously, Pull-Ups...call me.

The Boy Who Cried Pee

My son is The Boy Who Cried Pee. We began potty training about a month ago. At recommendations from friends, we went cold turkey on diapers, moving to underpants for everything except nighttime. I have to say, he's doing pretty well. With the occasional accident, he does do his business on the potty most of the time. He knows if he says "Go pee" then we whisk him away to the bathroom and sit with him until he's done, clapping and cheering at his accomplishments.

The problem is, sometimes he just wants the 3 minute visit and congratulations. He'll announce his desires and we'll rush to the loo, only to sit and wait for something that never comes. After about 5 of these in a day, I began to doubt his honesty, doing the math back to when he'd last been and what he'd consumed since. Is this something you want to risk? Not believing a toddler when he says he has to pee is a dangerous gamble.

I long for the day he'll actually go in there by himself and sit down on his own to get 'er done. But until that day comes, we still jump to attention the minute he even whispers those words. That is, with the exception of first thing in the morning. I know when he comes into our room first thing in the morning and claims he has to go, that he has in fact already been in his Pull-Up and is just trying to get me out of bed. I also know that the Pull-Up will hold while I grab a few more minutes of warmth under the covers. Yes, the Pull-Up might fail one day, but that is a gamble I'm willing to take at 6:00am.